Subconscious

[herme3]

What exactly is a subconscious? Do the thoughts of my subconscious sometimes flow into the thoughts that I am aware of? When a certain thought comes into my mind, was it processed in my subconscious first?

 

Sometimes I feel like my mind is arguing with itself. I sometimes make a decision, even though I really want to make another decision. Is this my subconscious taking over my mind?

[RyanJ]

What exactly is a subconscious?

 

I'd say it is the part of the mind thats always working in the background, it analyzes what you are doing, comparing it to things you have done in the past etc. It looks for dangers and tells you thinks that you may not otherwise notice. things of that nature. Its sort of like that little voice in your mind that check what you are doing. You could even say that your memory and any part of your brain that is not active if your subonsious because its doing things that you may not actually be aware of.

 

 

Do the thoughts of my subconscious sometimes flow into the thoughts that I am aware of

 

Certainly can. I watched a show about a fireman who went into a building with an uneasy feeling, he quickly called his team out and soon after the building collapsed. it turns out he has seen something like it before and his brain had told him (by giving him the ueasy feeling) that he should get out fast. I'd say thats one of the examples where your subconsious mind acts to help you.

 

When a certain thought comes into my mind, was it processed in my subconscious first?

 

You could say all thoughts reside in your subconsious untill you actually start thinking about them. I;ve had numerous experiences where I have been working on a problem, left it for a while and came back with the right answer. This suggests that my mind was working in the background all the rest of the time trying to work out the problem. So you could say it stays in the subconsious untill its called for like a program in a computers memory.

 

Is this my subconscious taking over my mind?

 

This one is a bit more complicated. According to psycology there are three "parts" of your mind, the ID, the Ego and the Super Ego - all are constantly arguing with each other and eventually come to a desicion about whats right and whats not. You could say the subconsious influences your actions by helping you to aviod danger and in other instances help you to solve problems but as for actually taking control if your mind I would not think so because its basically only working in the background so your brain dooes not overload with all the information its working on - like an input fiter then

 

Cheers & Hope that helps,

 

Ryan Jones

[Conceptual]

The right side of the brain is more spatial, while the left side of the brain is logical or rational. The spatial part of the brain stores 3-D memory, while the left side of the brain is more 2-D (cause and effect) and stores 2-D memory. The subconscious uses the faster and more dense 3-D memory grid and will periodically output to ego consciousness. Usually the signal is unconscious because it is too dense for the ego to translate and will often appear as an intuition, i.e, complex feeling tone loaded fast memory. If the ego can translate it to 2-D, the ego can give some rational meaning to the 3-D output.

 

Using a geometric analogy, the 3-D memory is a ball, while 2-D memory is a plane. The 2-D ouptut from the 3-D memory is usually one or more planes that intersect the ball. The more rational planes the closer one can get to expressing a 3-D memory. For example the integrated concept of God, is not very easy to put into words, this 3-D memory would require volumes of writing to begin to express its full meaning. The sum of all these rational planes begin to express the volume of the 3-D ball.

 

The subconscious is only unconscious because culture wants it to be. There is a language called symbolism which allows one to have a better shot a translating the 3-D memory. Symbolism is somewhere between 2-D and 3-D and provides a step down link for rational translation. This link suggests if the ego studied all points of view about a subject, the subconscious would stored the same memory into 3-D. This would be a natural integration of the data. The next step is to translate the 3-D back to 2-D to give it rational meaning.

[herme3]

Hi RyanJ, thank you for your reply. So, my subconscious is like a parallel mind that analyzes the thoughts of my conscious mind? That is very interesting. Could a subconscious have its own personality? For example, could a really nice person have a mean subconscious? As a result, could this cause the nice person to "mentally snap" and kill somebody?

 

Is there any way that I could actually read the thoughts of my own subconscious? For example, could I ask my subconscious for advice when I'm making a decision, or does all of that happen automatically?

 

The right side of the brain is more spatial' date=' while the left side of the brain is logical or rational. The spatial part of the brain stores 3-D memory, while the left side of the brain is more 2-D (cause and effect) and stores 2-D memory. The subconscious uses the faster and more dense 3-D memory grid and will periodically output to ego consciousness. Usually the signal is unconscious because it is too dense for the ego to translate and will often appear as an intuition, i.e, complex feeling tone loaded fast memory. If the ego can translate it to 2-D, the ego can give some rational meaning to the 3-D output.

 

Using a geometric analogy, the 3-D memory is a ball, while 2-D memory is a plane. The 2-D ouptut from the 3-D memory is usually one or more planes that intersect the ball. The more rational planes the closer one can get to expressing a 3-D memory. For example the integrated concept of God, is not very easy to put into words, this 3-D memory would require volumes of writing to begin to express its full meaning. The sum of all these rational planes begin to express the volume of the 3-D ball.

 

The subconscious is only unconscious because culture wants it to be. There is a language called symbolism which allows one to have a better shot a translating the 3-D memory. Symbolism is somewhere between 2-D and 3-D and provides a step down link for rational translation. This link suggests if the ego studied all points of view about a subject, the subconscious would stored the same memory into 3-D. This would be a natural integration of the data. The next step is to translate the 3-D back to 2-D to give it rational meaning.[/quote']

 

Hi Conceptual. I believe that most of my thoughts are in 3-D. For example, I usually see things in pictures and events instead of words. The only time I really translate my thoughts into words is when I need to explain something to somebody.

[RyanJ]

Hi RyanJ' date=' thank you for your reply. So, my subconscious is like a parallel mind that analyzes the thoughts of my conscious mind? That is very interesting. Could a subconscious have its own personality? For example, could a really nice person have a mean subconscious? As a result, could this cause the nice person to "mentally snap" and kill somebody?

 

Is there any way that I could actually read the thoughts of my own subconscious? For example, could I ask my subconscious for advice when I'm making a decision, or does all of that happen automatically?

[/quote']

 

Yes you could put it that way - or atleastt I would say so. Its always there influencing your actions but you just don't realize it.

 

Could a subconscious have its own personality?

 

Thats a good one - I don't really know. Its actually a composite of the brain that is not actually being used at the time so I'd probably say not although you could say its manifestation could be considred another aspect of the mind

Going along the lines of having what you call a mental "snap". I do have something like this due to a bad childhood (I'll not go into this here as it will probably do more harm to you and cause you to go insane ). Due to repressed memories of my childhood I have something where all the rage and anger I experience is suddenly, and in most cases unknowlingly, forced out onto an object. When this happens I have no memory of what I have done...

So, I suppose in that sence you could have a mind lapse where your consious brain is overrun by your subconsious

 

Is there any way that I could actually read the thoughts of my own subconscious? For example, could I ask my subconscious for advice when I'm making a decision, or does all of that happen automatically?

 

I'd say that your subconsious is always there working in the background and so it is an automatic thing. It would be like asking yourself a question as this part of your brain is actually working on things when your consious mind is not. Accessing memories, useing them and analyzing situations are some of the things it seems to do

 

Not shure how good of an explination I cna provide as science does not really undersand the brain that well...

 

Cheers & Hope I helped,

 

Ryan Jones

[BobbyJoeCool]

For the record... Id, Ego, and Superego are all Freudian... and it's one school of thought on the subject (and most of Freud's thoughts are concidered not true per se anymore)....

 

 

You subconscious mind is the part of the mind that you are not aware of. Like when you get into a routine, and you say "I could do that in my sleep." that's because you're conscious mind is thinking about/trying to solve some problem while your subconscious mind is going through the same routine that you go through every day. Driving is a good example... Your conscious mind can be talking to the person next to you, thinking about what you're going to tell you boss because you're 2 hours late... etc, and when you get where you're trying to go, you suddenly think, "I wasn't thinking at all about actually driving here..." That's because while you had more pertinant things on your mind, you subconscious took over the "easy" driving (because, for the most part, it can be done robotically). Now this is ok, because, say a kid runs in front of your car, you subconscious signals your conscious to take over because something different has happened and you need actual thought to decide what to do (which all happens in about .1 seconds).

 

I can attest to this at work... as a fast food worker, all the tasks are so menial that I can do them without thinking (subconsciously)... Now, it's faster if I'm completely focused on what I'm doing, but I can actually solve many problems, think many things over etc. while doing 8 hours of work, because that's how routine my job is (same thing, day in, day out). Some say that it becomes "second nature." Which is another way of saying the subconscous takes over.

 

Also, iirc, your brain processes close to 500 inputs at any given time, but you only consciously process about 10... You still notice things you process in your subconscious, but it's those situations where you "can't put your finger on it..." A situation seems farmilliar because it's a lot like one you've been in before, but you only consciously remember the other occurance by what you consciously "saw" and not as a whole, and since you're looking at things differently, it seems different, and yet it seems farmilliar. De ja vous is a good illustration of this. (I don't know if you understand what I'm saying, but I know it, and maybe if you ask more specific questions, I can better answer)

 

Now, that's what subconscoius is... Now to the rest of your questions...

 

Do the thoughts of my subconscious sometimes flow into the thoughts that I am aware of? When a certain thought comes into my mind, was it processed in my subconscious first?

 

Thoughts are primarily the domain of the conscious mind. Because, if you view thought as speaking to yourself without talking, you are always aware of what's being said. The subconscious can influence what's on your conscious mind. Such as, when you're looking at a situation, you don't really notice that the leg of a chair is about to break (because it does so slowely), but you have a gut feeling that you should pick your child up out of the chair, and not long after, it breaks and you say, "Well, that was lucky!" This could be seen as your subconscious telling your conscious that something was happening, and you should do something...

 

Sometimes I feel like my mind is arguing with itself. I sometimes make a decision, even though I really want to make another decision. Is this my subconscious taking over my mind?

 

When you argue with yourself, it's entirely conscious. It's you trying to figure out the solution to a problem by trying to view it from different viewpoints (which, I've found, is the best way!). When you make a decision when you want the other, it can be for many reasons...

A) you can realize that what you want isn't what's best.

B) you might be doing it to prove to yourself just how screwed you are... (depression can cause this)

C) you might be trying something different (not doing what you want...)

etc...

 

You're subconscious mind can't "take over" your conscious mind. If you're reffering to a situation such as in the movie Psycho (Hitchcock) (if you haven't seen the movie, and don't want a spoiler, skip the rest of this paragraph), where he has both the personalitles of him and his mother... this is a mental disorder called MPD (Multiple personality disorder). Both personalites exist in the conscious mind. And at times, the "mother" became stronger than his, and took over. But everything that happened was in the conscious mind.

 

So, my subconscious is like a parallel mind that analyzes the thoughts of my conscious mind? That is very interesting. Could a subconscious have its own personality? For example, could a really nice person have a mean subconscious? As a result, could this cause the nice person to "mentally snap" and kill somebody?

 

That's one way of viewing subconscious... it really is just what you don't realize your brain is doing (regulating breathing, and the rest of my examples are good examples). It can be working on problems just like your conscious mind, but it's not as good at it (because (mostly) logic exists in the conscious mind and not in the unconscious...). You subconscious isn't very good at all at "thinking for itself" (hence in the car example, when the kid appears, it signals the conscious to take over because it doesn't know what to do).

 

And, no it doesn't have a personality of it's own... it has no real personality at all... it's a place where routine things get done. (kinda like a subroutine of a program.) You can "program" your subconscious to do things much like a computer, but it can't handle creating logic on it's own. You can "train" it, but if you have to deviate from what it's trained to do it won't know what to do and the conscious mind has to take over. Which is why, if we go back to the work example, a job were all the tasks are menial and routine, it does take some conscious thought to orginize what to do... Like, my subconscious can count the drawers, count the deposit, make sandwiches, take orders (MOST orders, I should say...), bag and hand stuff out, etc... but orginizing it so that it all gets done in a timly/orderly fashion takes some conscious thought (knowing which subconscious "subroutine" to call, and at what time.)

 

Is there any way that I could actually read the thoughts of my own subconscious? For example, could I ask my subconscious for advice when I'm making a decision, or does all of that happen automatically?

 

See the previous section... it doesn't really have it's own thoughts, so you can't really read them. And when you become aware of what it's doing, it becomes conscious thought, and no longer subconscious. When you make a desicion (if it's one you have to make regularly, like what should I wear today?), it can be handled subconsciously (if you're male that is... jk.) because it's more of a what matches with what, or even, what's clean, rather than what's the best way to get from point a to point b. You can't ask your subconscious for advice, per se, but it can make minor desicions without need for conscious thought...

 

Home I helped you Herme...

[Conceptual]

I am a fan of the psychologist Carl Jung. He was Freud's star pupil until they had a parting of the ways. Freud's orientation is more ego-centric with the ego being influenced by the id (instincts) and superego (culture). Jung's thesis broke the id up into not just the personal unconscious but also a deeper layer he called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is part of the unconscious mind that is more collective in nature instead of individual. For example, falling in love, is something common to all humans at one time or another. It creates personality dynamics that are beyond the ego to create for itself. In this case, the unconscious mind sort of takes over and the ego goes for a ride.

 

Jung tries to show how there are many such phenomena of the brain which he called the archetypes. These can be looked at as being similar to personality software of the unconscious mind. Periodically, the software is loaded and helps the ego gain experience. The ancient people were much more affected by these personality software and called these their gods, who would interfere in human life and drive the ego to states of sublime all the way to beastial behavior.

 

For the most part these are repressed by modern culture but traces of them can still be found in dreams. Things like aliens can be viewed as modern gods and a more than likely projections from the collective unconscious. These phenomena are trying to reach consciousness within certain people.

[BobbyJoeCool]

That sounds very Freudian... even though there's nothing about Sex in it...

 

It's a point of view, and it makes sence. I like the one I tried to explain, (having been only exposed to a couple by my various psych teachers)